Foodie Friday -- Pumpkin Streusel Bread

My first Foodie Friday recipe after a long break.
I had some leftover canned pumpkin and needed to find a way to use it. This recipe is the result.
And it was polished off quite quickly!

Enjoy!

Pumpkin Streusel Bread

Streusel:

¾ cup chopped walnuts

2 T butter

2-3 T sugar

1 T flour

1 t. cinnamon

Mix well, using fingers to break butter into tiny pieces.

Pumpkin batter:

1 2/3 cup flour

1 ½ cup sugar

1 t. baking soda

¼ t. baking powder

¾ t. salt

½ t. ground cloves

½ t. nutmeg

½ t. cinnamon

2 eggs

½ cup vegetable oil

1 1/3 cup pure pumpkin

½ cup water

Sift dry ingredients together. Add eggs, oil, pumpkin and water. Beat well. Pour ½ of batter into greased and floured* loaf pan, sprinkle with ½ of streusel mixture. Swirl with knife. Add remaining batter and sprinkle remaining streusel on top. Bake at 325 degrees F. for about 1 hour 20 minutes, or until top springs back. Cool on wire rack for 15 minutes. Turn out of pan and cool completely.

Tips and Tricks:

·         I’ve become a HUGE fan of parchment paper, especially since my loaf pans are the “folded” kind, which means you can never get the corners completely clean.

·         Measure parchment and fold neatly so it fits the bottom of the pan. Flatten the corner edges and staple them into shape Repeat for all corners.

·         I did spray a little Pam on the paper, but probably didn’t need to.

·         Feel free to make more streusel. I only had ¾ cup of walnuts, so I had to make due.

·         To deepen the flavor of the streusel use brown sugar—dark brown sugar will give the deepest flavor.

·         Yes, sift the dry ingredients. I have a battery operated sifter, but any type of mesh wire sieve will work. Use a spoon to work the flour mixture through the sieve.

·         If you don’t have all the spices, you could probably make due with McCormick’s pumpkin pie spice. It has ginger and allspice along with the above ingredients.

·         I had to use about ½ cup of pumpkin from a 15 oz. can for a different recipe and this was what I had left. The original recipe called for only 1 cup. If you add more pumpkin (like the entire can) you might want to cut back on the water.

·         I used the convection oven setting for this recipe. I wanted more circulation around the pan due to the longer time in the oven.

·         After removing the bread from the pan, I let it cool for a little longer before removing the parchment paper so the bread could cool completely